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Pumas denied Wallabies Test
By Wayne Smith
December 26, 2007
ARGENTINA's hopes of using a Test in June against Australia as the centrepiece of its historic campaign to make its game professional have been dashed by the Australian Rugby Union's inability to squeeze the Pumas into its 2008 program.
Argentina Rugby Union (UAR) president Alejandro Risler had said that, as a result of a meeting with ARU chairman Peter McGrath and other Australian officials in England last month, a Pumas-Wallabies Test would be played in either Australia or Buenos Aires in June.
The proposed Test was seen by Argentina as a key component in its plan to ensure the momentum built by the Pumas' stunning third-place finish at the Rugby World Cup in France was not lost.
But ARU acting chief executive Matt Carroll said this week the scheduling of a Test in June against Argentina, on top of the series against the inbound French side, was impossible.
"There simply is no room," Carroll said.
The ARU has suggested the match be played in July, filling in one of the spare weekends during the Wallabies' Tri-Nations campaign, but almost all of Argentina's top players are based in Europe and that month is the designated rest time for northern hemisphere footballers.
If the match went ahead then, the Pumas would struggle to field a third-string side - scarcely an attractive proposition.
The scheduling nightmare has highlighted the need for the historic summit meeting the UAR has called of all its constituents in Buenos Aires on Saturday at which more than 100 years of amateur rugby is expected to be brought to a close.
Where the rest of the rugby world embraced professionalism in 1995, Argentina clung stubbornly to the old amateur ethos.
As a result, Argentina has become the largest exporter of talent in the world, with more than 400 of its top footballers spread over European clubs and even Test sides.
No fewer than half a dozen Argentines are to be found in the Italian Test squad alone.
But while the player drain was the obvious downside of sticking to the old ways in a fast-changing world, a previously unrecognised benefit of maintaining amateurism is now starting to emerge.
Where club rugby around the world is suffering from the mindset that everyone involved at the top end expects payment, volunteers flourish in Argentine club rugby, especially in the overflowing junior ranks.
Only physical trainers are allowed to be paid in Argentina, and then they scarcely receive more than pocket money.
Les Cusworth, the former Leicester and England player and coach who now serves as the UAR's director of rugby, said that attitude had generated a dynamism in Argentina that no other country is capable of matching.
"The maintenance of the club structure here is imperative, otherwise we'll kill the goose that lays the golden egg," Cusworth said.
It is a limited form of professionalism that Risler intends to introduce. "First we need to change the by-laws to allow professional rugby and then we can start with 60-70 professionals," Risler said.
His bold plan is that those 70-odd players, many of whom he hopes to lure back from overseas, will be split into two Argentina-based teams that will compete next year in South Africa's domestic Currie Cup competition.
It's a daring concept and one that will test the preparedness of Argentine players to travel whatever distances are required to play the game.
But hopefully the scheme can be locked into place when the South African Rugby Union, which has inherited the rotating SANZAR secretariat from Australia, sends a delegation to Buenos Aires in February.
Risler also hopes that that meeting will settle on a date for a Test against the world champion Springboks in November.
With the Wallabies now off the radar until 2009 at the earliest, the UAR strongman desperately is hoping he does not receive a similar rebuff from South Africa.
Just how urgently Argentina needs admission to the Tri-Nations competition was highlighted a fortnight ago when the Pumas, despite fielding none of their Rugby World Cup side, put Chile to the sword 79-8 in San Juan in one of only three locked-in Tests on their schedule in the next 12 months.
"We didn't play any of our professionals against them, nor any of the six amateurs we took to the World Cup," Cusworth said.
"Admission to a major competition is what we need. Everyone seems to be pointing us in the direction of the Tri-Nations (after a recent application to join the Six Nations was rejected) but if that's the way it's going, we need to get moving."
SANZAR's plan is that Argentina will be admitted to a southern hemisphere super series once the new broadcast agreement is negotiated in 2010, but Risler is determined that the intervening years will not be wasted.
"It will have to be a transition period but arranging competition is the big challenge for Argentina," Risler said.
It's important for reasons beyond merely exposing a new generation of Pumas to the demands of Test rugby.
Although there are no indications that the country's economy will enable the UAR to match the European offers in the short-term - "if Argentina can't keep its soccer players at home, what hope does Argentine rugby have?" asked Cusworth - the union is hoping to at least slow the talent drain to a trickle and even lure back some of its lost legions.
To do that, the UAR needs to generate some revenue and the sad fact is that it has been more economical for it to play Tests overseas in recent years rather than go to the expense of flying back its Pumas stars.
That's another reason why this amateurism summit is so important. If the UAR restructures itself along professional lines, it will be better placed to demand that the International Rugby Board hands over $5.2 million in development funds it has withheld over the past two years because it was not satisfied Argentina was planning properly for the future.
The IRB's fear was that all the recent gains, culminating in Argentina's repeat victories over host nation France to secure third place at the Rugby World Cup, could be frittered away.
No chance of that, according to Cusworth.
"There is so much talent coming through," he said. "Argentine rugby is in fine shape. There is no way the production line is going to grind to a halt."
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CHEERLEADERS ROCK!!! 
Originally Posted by AndyS
They could really be a worthy addition as soon as next season if the IRB wasn't a toothless tiger! 
But then again, you can also add Uruguayan players and Chileans (who have a good 7s team) to that mix- and I can't see there being a problem with having them in the Super 14 squad
